Constructing scientific careers: change, continuity and context

This paper examines the ways in which public sector research scientists make sense of and seek to develop their careers within their current organizational, policy, social and cultural contexts. It argues that to access such understandings, both structure and agency and the relationship between them need to be considered. Using empirical evidence from research in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, this paper further develops Barley’s (1989) structuration model of career. It highlights the diverse (and frequently intersecting) institutional contexts in which research scientists seek to develop their careers, and their characteristic modes of engagement with such contexts, and utilizes the concept of career scripts to illustrate the dynamic interaction between these dimensions.